Healthcare facilities around the world allocate huge portions of their budgets to managing waste. Hospital waste is unique in several ways. For instance, there is a large variety of different types of waste, or waste streams, having very different handling and other disposal requirements. Healthcare waste streams are generally categorized to include solid, regulated medical and recycling waste. Other waste streams include confidential document, hazardous, and construction debris waste.
For instance, hospitals employ toxic chemicals and hazardous materials for numerous diagnostic and treatment purposes. Examples of hazardous materials include formaldehyde, photographic chemicals, radio nuclides, solvents, mercury, waste, anesthetic gases and other toxic, corrosive chemicals.
Solid, regulated medical waste generally includes materials generated in the diagnosis, treatment, research, or immunization of human beings or animals. Examples of regulated medical waste includes: cultures and stocks, pathological wastes, human blood and blood products, sharps, certain animal waste and isolation wastes. Other types of solid (unregulated and nonhazardous) waste is referred to within the industry as the solid waste stream.
Confidential material produced by healthcare facilities comes in many forms. From patient records to billing reports to pharmacy bottles, wristbands, and a variety of other printed materials, private patient information abounds within the healthcare system. Controlling and limiting the hospital's risk in unintentional disclosure of this information is challenging.
Hospitals and other healthcare service providers additionally must manage tons of recycling waste, in addition to periodic construction debris attributable to expansion or remodeling.
Despite of the enormous dollars spent on managing waste, few healthcare systems have historically focused on maximizing the value received in this area. With continued pressure on healthcare providers to be efficient and cost effective, however, many hospitals and other providers recognize the need to accurately assess and streamline their waste stream disposal operations.
Such waste stream assessments are complicated by a number of factors, however. One obstacle to an accurate accounting of waste disposal stems from the varying processes by which different types of waste streams are traditionally disposed. Conventional in-house assessments and consultations generally focus on one, individual waste stream. This singular focus is largely because each waste stream may have vastly different disposal requirements from other streams. Most experts in the field specialize in a particular waste stream. Even within the healthcare field, few personnel have the technical know how or resources to evaluate the discrepant processes and requirements of different waste streams. Other challenges relate to different state and federal disposal regulations. Such codes vary not only per different waste streams, but also according to locality.
For example, each waste stream's economic structure is unique to that particular waste stream. The unique structure takes into account specific charges known for each stream. For instance, haul rates and per ton pricing for solid waste, pricing for confidential documents, per pound/per contained charges for regular medical waste, and other charges may vary per specific waste stream application.
Another challenge facing healthcare facility managers includes the volumes of invoices and paperwork associated with each, individual stream of waste. Many facility managers struggle to maintain the volumes of paperwork in any practically usable state.
As a result, many facility managers are relegated to working with dozens of vendors and having to process thousands of different invoices. The billed rates may in some instances be inconsistent with the contracted rates, and those invoices may include numerous unexpected charges and fees. Even where administrators attempt to diligently track invoices, they are rarely aware of discrepancies between contracts and invoices due to the sheer volume of paperwork and contractors.
Tracking hazardous waste in hospitals is often further complicated by a lack of available records of waste generation. For example, facility managers may lack maintenance paperwork indicative of the status of existing equipment. Review of such records is nonetheless required for service issues, such as sharps containers that are worn out, or not properly cleaned, sized or positioned. Lack of comprehensive and meaningful records may further lead to hazardous waste being mixed with infectious waste, as well as to the disposal of potentially hazardous wastes into the sewer.
In one sense, the absence of a comprehensive, “big picture” perspective of waste management can lead to inaccurate, inconsistent and unmeaningful waste stream assessments. Conventional accounting practices provide little incentive for providers to be more efficient, and provide limited information and options that could lead to improvement. As a consequence, healthcare providers may be reluctant to spend funds on assessments that could otherwise potentially identify economic waste arising from mistake and inefficiency.
There consequently exists a need for an improved manner of assessing medical waste processes.